Ah yes another 100 loss year where Moore refuses to acknowledge the best value of his assets is in trades.
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My stance on trading Merrifield remains the same as it was at the deadline: if a team is willing to plop down a top 50 prospect as a centerpiece and add a few pieces on to that, OK.

If the best you’re looking at is a guy at the fringe of the top 100, that’s not incredibly enticing. From what I heard/read last season, the offers they got looked like this.

Until you start getting offers in the territory of what would make you pull the trigger, saying “he isn’t on the table” makes the most sense.

It’s easy to say “flip him for prospects” but if the trade return was Something like Khalil Lee and Jonathan Bowlen (for Royals system equivalents), I’m pretty sure reaction here would be they got ripped off.

^ not a defense of Moore. I’m down with those. Just general trade negotiation stuff.

Re: not spending a lot on free agents, again, best thing to say for negotiation purposes. And honestly, I like the switch in approach. It’s the team realizing what they are for 2020 and being realistic about it.

They’ve been marginally successful flipping rentals for prospects - a hard thing to do these days - so not a huge loss there.

I expect them to bring back Gordon on a 1-year deal and re-sign Jake Diekman. Beyond that, IDK. Maybe a flyer on a Homer Bailey-ish starter works.
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My biggest issue with the trade stuff is I feel like Moore is more interested in keeping popular plays around for ticket sales than realizing by the time the team is any good all these dudes will be old and washed.
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Who do we have coming up? Khalil Lee is the only somewhat significant prospect in the OF anywhere close to KC.
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OF are done a dozen. Starling can prob be a replacement level player this year which is about what Alex would be.
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So how would y'all conclude the Mike Montgomery experiment worked out?

I thought he was a damn interesting gamble but I'm not sure there was ever going to be enough time for him to rediscover his curve.

Y'all see enough to tender him and bring him back next season for around $3 million? I would've thought so - seemed like he had some good starts here and there. But did you see enough underlying skills apart from pure outcomes to suggest that he's a viable option for another year or two?
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I’d go 3/20 on him right now. Yes I liked what ai saw quite a bit. His stuff is still there and he’s got really good command of the zone high and low. He had a couple blowup games that inflated his ERA. Honestly I don’t know why he hasn’t been more successful, I can totally see why he was a top-20 prospect all those years and always has an mlb job.
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I think we had this discussion the last time but I still think the Royals would be better served looking for a couple guys that are just below that tier.

I believe the example I used was Dylan Carlson who, a year ago, was a fringe top 100 guy (and that's being generous). But he was young and there was breakout potential there if you looked for it. Now he's rocketing up prospects lists and seems to have a real chance to make the big club out of camp next season. Now I was super-high on him because that's my team so I watch him closely, but I know the Royals have regional scouts that are assigned a handful of teams and they HAVE to have a few guys like this on their radars as well.

Those guys that you shouldn't really call untouchable because they aren't, but guys you really don't want to move because you're just positive they're 12 months away from increasing their trade value exponentially. Those guys don't hit prospects lists until they explode onto them and there are 20 of them every single season.

Evan White is a guy for the Mariners that I was hoping the Cards would make inquiries into in 2018 before they !@#$ed up and overpaid for Goldschmidt. And White's moved himself into right at a top 50 prospect at this point after not making most top 100 lists the season prior. But I'm not sure you should be looking for an Evan White return (and you'll never get a Dylan Carlson). What you should be looking for is the NEXT Evan White or Dylan Carlson.

For the Royals to truly leverage Whit into the next "Greinke" sort of deal, they'll need to gamble a bit, IMO. He's too old and he's not flashy enough for a team to really go nuts trying to get him. But they could probably get a couple of those 'just outside the top 100' guys who explode onto the landscape if they're lucky. Those are the the best targets, IMO. Those are the kinds of risks they have to take for a truly difference making return.

Otherwise the best you're gonna get for an IFer with marginal power and declining speed who's on the wrong side of 30 is a guy with middle of the rotation potential or a possible 2-3 win OFer. Not nothin' but not a lot either. Nothing that will really alter the team's trajectory going forward.
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I went over it a bit when you traded for him, but the bullpen conversion wasn't good for him once he figured out how to succeed, IMO.

He needed a 3rd offering and found one with an excellent curveball. And he knew it too; he fully understood the value of his curve. Then with the move to the bullpen and a rough patch in CHC he ended up losing the feel for it and feel is absolutely vital for a curveball pitcher. When he lost his confidence and kept getting sent out there for a contending Cubs team, he never had the runway or situation to try to rediscover the feel for that curve - he couldn't get beat with it in the 7th inning of important games.

I felt like a return to the rotation and a spot on a rebuilding squad could be huge for him to let him get that curve back. More pitches, more time to work between outings, a little more rope if he's struggling. All that will allow him to find that curve and then pitch off it.

If he's stuck trying to succeed strictly fastball/changeup, he's a pinata.
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I agree with the premise of the return - that to get someone who can be a difference maker for Merrifield - you now need to be looking at the guys who COULD move drastically up the list in the next year. That's where the market has gone.

But there's still an incredible amount of variance in those types of players. And I think that's still the type of talent you're looking at in return for him with three.five years or two years of control left, or even one.five years of control left.

Re: the variance, take Carlson and Khalil Lee and compare the two. They're the same age, have similar toolsets, and had very similar 2018 campaigns (Carlson was .246/.348/.390 at A+ and A in 18, Lee was .263/.348/.390 at A+ and AA). Lee progressed at a solid rate in 2019 but didn't take off like Carlson. Which outcome is more likely when you're working with players like that?

I'm willing to be patient on that. I think you can get someone with that profile as the centerpiece down the road for Merrifield. I wouldn't pull the trigger on something like that now, personally.
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re: Montgomery

I definitely bring him back and let him roll in the rotation this year. I think he's trade bait at the deadline for sure, and if they can get him signed to a cheap little 3-year/$20 million deal, they might even be able to get an exciting piece or two back for him.

He hasn't been able to hold the mid-high 90s fastball that made him a top 20 overall prospect in the minors, but sitting low 90s he's still a solid mid-rotation type.
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Merrifield already saw his SB plummet from 2018 to 2019 and I saw a stat somewhere showing his speed on the bases has already started to decline. What's to say he doesn't continue to decline? And correct me if I'm wrong, but the last 2 seasons he's had what appears could be an unsustainable BABIP. If he has a season where he comes back closer to the mean and his speed continues to decline he could lose whatever value he had to begin with.
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Yeah, the volatility of those guys is a problem. But at the same time, there's plenty of volatility in the top 50 guys in their own right. So you're working with a lot of bust potential either way.

Which is why I think you're better served with 2 of the 'pre-breakout' types than you are 1 of the guys in that 30-50 range.

Now if you can get a top 20 guy, do that - sure. But I don't think you can. I think the best case scenario is a headliner of an Evan White type and if that's the piece you're looking for, you're gonna get 1 of him and then some organizational filler in all likelihood. Maybe someone like the Cards got in Genesis Cabrera who's unlikely to have ever hit a prospect list but has the raw stuff you'd like to see.

So if the question is 1 2019 Evan White w/ a 60% bust rate or 2 2018 Evan White's with an 80% bust rate, I think you take the latter with the hope that one of those two guys does take that big step forward and gives you a higher ceiling to go with a similar overall likelihood of success.
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This is what would really worry me.

I've seen plenty of "The time to strike on Merrifield is here for the Royals..." sorts of articles when in reality the time to strike with Merrifield was almost certainly at the trade deadline in 2018 or the winter meetings that offseason.

I think you're on the downhill side of his value either way and it's only gonna get worse going forward. Worse still, I feel like some teams that would've been good fits (the Cardinals and Brewers spring to mind) have become much more satisfied with their in-house options (Wong/Hueira). So the pool of suitors has probably diminished somewhat as well. I guess the Yankees and Sox may be interested, especially if the Yankees let Didi walk and move Torres over to SS. He'd be a fantastic fit in that lineup full of sluggers.

That said, he does have some skills that age pretty well. His batting eye and bat control are strong and those tend to stick around longer than a lot of other skills. And if he can keep his HR pop in the 15+ range, he'll be a credible enough threat that pitchers can't just groove him strikes so his OBP will remain an asset.

Brett Gardner's the kind of offensive profile you'd hope that Whit could develop as he ages. Gardner's speed fell off pretty hard in his early 30s but he never lost his eye so his OBP stayed strong. Then he started swinging a bit harder and traded some strikeouts for some ISO to stay a valuable offensive contributor into his mid-30s.

Merrifield's a smart, heady player so that possibility is there. But there are more people who kinda faded away when they lost their wheels than there are guys who became 20+ HR hitters to make up for lost speed.
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I only can hope Merrfield becomes Jeff Blauser
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